Fiserv: Home Prices Will Return to Peak Levels in 2023

Home prices might not return to their peak until 2023, a new home price study indicates.

Research from the analytics firm Fiserv predicts that home prices will increase an average of 3.7 percent a year for the next five years. That might sound good, but at that rate home prices won't reach their peak levels until 2023, notes CNNMoney. After five years, they'll still be 20 percent below peak levels.

Some markets, like Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, might take even longer to recover. Fiserv predicts that home values in Nevada, which dropped 60 percent in the bursting real estate bubble, will increase 2.3 percent a year, which would take 40 years to regain their lost values.

On the other hand, home prices in California will increase 4.4 percent a year over the next five years, according to CNNMoney. However, because prices plummeted 46 percent since 2007, they won't return to peak levels until after 2026.

Some less volatile real estate markets that didn't see a home price bubble are doing fine. For instance, prices in South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia are slightly higher than they were five years ago.

The 10 worst housing markets in Fiserv's research have fallen at least 55 percent, notes 24/7 Wall Street, and those areas are also suffering from high unemployment rates.

Eight of the 10 have unemployment rates of at least 10 percent, and five are above 12 percent, according to 24/7 Wall Street. Merced, Calif., had an unemployment rate of 17.8 percent in July, the fourth-highest in the country.

“The reason the job markets are so weak in these metro areas is that during the boom more than half of the growth was generated either directly or indirectly by residential real estate, and so now the reverse has happened,” David Stiff, Fiserv’s chief economist, tells 24/7 Wall Street.